Image Editors with PNG Support

Maintenance Note

The PNG-supporting applications and toolkits pages are no longer being
actively updated; for several years already, it's been safe to assume
that virtually any bitmap-capable image app supports PNG. Corrections are still
welcome, particularly for "repurposed domains" (park-spam), but
new applications are no longer being added.

For the purposes of this page, an "image editor" is defined as a paint or
drawing program that supports pixel-level editing (or the equivalent). As
a general rule of thumb, if it's got a pencil or paint-brush tool, it's in; if
it supplies only "algorithms" (such as sharpening, blurring, edge-detection,
cropping, etc.), it's not. See the Image Converters
page for applications in the latter class.

As on the other PNG-applications pages, links to home WWW sites or to
downloadable versions are provided where known, but if a link is broken,
check the location and see if an updated version is available (and
please tell Greg!).
Relevant operating systems are printed in (parenthesized italics).

ArtIcons [Aha-soft]
(Win32) - version 2.3 and later; read/write; full 32-bit alpha
support as of version 3.22; shareware. (This is an icon editor for
32-bit Windows; PNG is fully supported in both the regular and the
Pro versions, as well as the apparently related IconXP variant. Alpha
support is relevant only to icons intended for Windows XP [and later],
however.)

Artstream [Mediascape] (Irix/X, Linux/X) - version 2.0 and later;
read/write; full 32-bit alpha support; commercial. (This is primarily
an OpenGL-based vector image editor, but it can include raster formats
such as PNG in compositions, and it can save to various raster formats,
including PNG. It can also import VRML models [which can have PNG
textures]. The Linux port originally was expected to be in production
release by early May 2000, but as of February 2002 it was still available
only in beta [2.0] and alpha [2.1] forms.)

Aura [NewTek /
TVPaint Développement]
(Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write; full 32-bit alpha
support; commercial. (This is mainly an image editor, although it has
extensions into the audio and video domains, too. As of 31 March
2003, this product is no longer available separately from NewTek.
Apparently it is still available as part of NewTek's Video
Toaster product, however, and standalone versions can be upgraded
to TVPaint's Mirage, below.)

Becasso [Sum
Software] (BeOS PPC/x86) - version 1.1 and later; read/write
(via the translation kit and Becasso's bundled PNG translator); full
(32-bit) alpha support; no gamma support; commercial.
(The PNG translator is also included in the free demo version.)

BePaint [Kevin
Hendrickson] (BeOS) - all versions; read/write (via Jon
Watte's BeOS datatype library and Simon Clarke's PNG handler). (This
app has not been updated since January 1997 and presumably no longer
works with current BeOS releases.)

CompactDraw [Mediachance] (Win32) - all versions; read/write;
shareware. (This is a paint/draw program that supports both vector and
bitmapped objects but apparently only exports bitmaps, including PNG.
See Real-DRAW, below, for the "professional" version, or
Photo-Brush for a photo-retouching editor.)

Composition [Rob Davison /
Clares Micro Supplies]
(RISC OS) - version 1.15 and later; read/write; full 32-bit alpha
support (including editing and combining alpha channels); uses
libpng, zlib and Spr2Png (converters page); commercial. (This is an image-composition app,
specifically designed to compose raster and vector images [and 3D models,
too]. It can also generate drop-shadows and other alpha-channel effects.
Free updates to the latest commercial version are available here.)

Embellish [Dadaware]
(OS/2, Win32) - all versions? read/write? terminal
freeware (was commercial). (This editor shares some heritage with the
excellent JoeView shareware image viewer for OS/2. Development
of this product was discontinued in December 1999, and Dadaware ceased
operations. The final commercial version was still available for a
few more years, but as of late 2005, the domain is gone.)

Enhance [MicroFrontier] (Mac 68k/PPC) - version 4.0 and later;
read/write; no gamma support; commercial. (Enhance is a
"Photoshop-like image editor" for Macintosh. The PNG support is still
fairly basic.)

FilmFX - see Satori below

Fireworks [Macromedia / Adobe] (Win32, Mac) - all versions;
read/write (Fireworks' native file format, in fact); full alpha support,
including good quantization to RGBA-palette mode in version 2.0;
no gamma support in version 1.0; partial interlacing support; version
1.0 reportedly writes 1-bit images as 8-bit and includes spurious,
incorrect sBIT chunk indicating 8-bit precision; commercial. (Since
version 2.0, the quantization from 32-bit RGBA to 8-bit RGBA-palette
appears to be perfect. Even without that, this was the best
PNG-supporting image editor available as of mid-1999, and it still
seems to be one of the best, along with GIMP and a handful of
others. Be sure to use "Export" rather than "Save" to create final
PNGs for the Web! The "Save" versions include Fireworks object and
state information, and not only are they huge, they also crash Windows 98 Explorer and MSIE 4.0.)

Flash [Macromedia / Adobe] (Win32, Mac) - version 4.0 and later; read/write;
commercial. (This is an editor for the multimedia format of the
same name, but Flash 4.0 and later include the capability to embed
bitmapped images in PNG format into a Flash animation.)

FreeHand [Macromedia / Adobe] (Win32, Mac PPC) - version 7.0 and
later; read/write; full alpha support; commercial.
(According to Chris Lilley: "FreeHand has a rather nice interface
when writing a PNG of a vector graphic - the amount of anti-aliasing
(supersampling of pixels) and even the sampling method can be
specified." Version 7.0 included xRes [below] and
Extreme3D [3D apps page].)

FrontPage - see Image Composer below

fxPAINT [IOSPIRIT]
(Amiga) - all versions; read/write; full alpha support as of
version 2.0; commercial.

Gill
[Raph Levien, Larry Ewing, and others]
(Unix/GTK+) - version of 1999-07-20 and later; read/write? full
alpha support; requires gdk-pixbuf, libpng and zlib;
freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a GNOME illustration app, a
vector image editor that uses SVG as its native vector format. Since
SVG in turn requires PNG for minimal conformance, Gill supports PNG, too.
As of July 2000, the web pages imply that the PNG support is still
read-only. Development apparently ended
sometime in 2000.)

GIMP
(GNU Image
Manipulation Program) [Spencer Kimball, Peter
Mattis, and many others] (Unix/GTK+, Win32, OS/2, Mac OS X) -
versions 0.54, 0.60, and 0.99.7 and later; read/write;
MNG support as of version 1.3.14
(write-only);
full alpha support (but also happily writes images with completely
opaque alpha channels, needlessly reducing compression efficiency);
gamma support, but always writes 1.0 (incorrect for most systems) as of
version 1.0.2 (this was fixed in version 1.1.7 of the PNG plug-in, which has its own release schedule); no support
for palette-based transparency in stock 1.0.2 (but this is also fixed in
version 1.1.7 of the PNG plug-in); good text support in PNG plug-in
1.1.7 (Title, Author, Description,
Copyright, Creation Time, Disclaimer,
Warning, Source, and Comment keywords);
writes bKGD chunks even for opaque images (not a bug in itself, but
triggers one in Netscape 4.x); uses libpng and zlib;
freeware (GPL) with source. (The GIMP is a "free Photoshop-like image
editor for X11," with built-in PNG support.)

GNOME-Iconedit
[Iain Holmes and Havoc Pennington] (Unix/GTK+) -
all versions; read/write; full alpha support; requires libpng and
zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is an icon editor with
support for "icons" of any size. It is specifically designed to create
and modify RGBA images.)

Grafree - see Imagem below

GrafX [Sunset Design / Eclipse] (Win32) -
version 2.0 and later; read/write; palette-only support? freeware.
(This appears to be a special-purpose image editor for "demos,"
standalone multimedia presentations. Judging by the screenshots,
version 2 may be a port of an older DOS or Amiga version.)

GraphicConverter [Lemke Software] (Mac 68k/PPC, Mac OS X) - version 2.1.4 and
later; read/write; binary palette-transparency support; alpha-channel
transparency support; gamma support as of version 4.0; text support as
of version 4.0; no 16-bps support; shareware.
(Comes in English, German, French, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian,
Italian, and Spanish versions. Older versions did not include complete
image-editing capabilities and were listed on the viewers and converters pages.)

HoTMetaL PRO [SoftQuad]
(Win32) - version 3.0 (Windows 3.x) and later;
read/write; commercial. This is more of a general-purpose web-page
authoring tool, but as of version 3.0 it integrates image-editing
features (in version 5.0, this is through the inclusion of Ulead's
PhotoImpact 3.02 SE, below). See also MetalWorks below.

IconPainter [Colin
Mummery / EquitySoft] (Java) - version 1.3 and later;
read/write; requires Java 2 and the Java Advanced Imaging API for PNG
support; shareware. (Despite its name, this product does not restrict
the size or number of colors in images to "typical icon" limits.)

idrW [Rean Botha]
(Win32) - all versions; read/write; shareware/commercial. (This
is a vector graphics editor; PNG is supported both for import [mainly so
that raster images can be traced and converted to vector format?] and
for export of finished images [though vector formats such as WMF are
preferred].)

Image Composer [Microsoft] (Win32) - version 1.5 and later;
read/write; full alpha support; reads images with invalid filter values
as if filter type were `none'; commercial. (This is part of
FrontPage 98. It was formerly known as Altamira
Composer and may now be superseded by PhotoDraw 2000 or
Photo Editor, below.)

ImageForge PRO [Cursor Arts] (Win32)
- version 2.9(?) and later; read/write; transparency
support as of version 2.94; shareware. (There's also a freeware version
of this tool, called ImageForge Basic or just ImageForge.)

Inkscape
[Inkscape developers] (Unix/GTK+, Win32/GTK+) - all versions?
read/write; full alpha support? requires libpng and zlib;
freeware (GPL) with source. (This is an "SVG editor with capabilities
similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, Visio, etc. Supported SVG features
include basic shapes, paths, text, alpha blending, transforms, gradients,
node editing, SVG-to-PNG export, grouping, and more." It is a fork of
the Sodipodi project, which in turn was partly based on
Gill.)

ivtools
[Stanford University and many
others] (Unix/X, Win32) - version 0.9.5 and later;
read-only? requires pngtopnm, libpng and zlib.
(This is a "suite of free X Windows drawing editors for PostScript, TeX, and web graphics production, as well as an embeddable and extendable
vector graphic shell.")

J-Painter [Igor
Zhukovsky] (Java, WWW) - all versions; read/write; no alpha
support; requires Java (JDK) 1.1 or later; shareware. (This is a full
paint-type applet that can be downloaded and embedded into web
pages; the home page also includes an embedded copy that can be used to
create a test PNG and e-mail the result to someone. [Very nice!])

Kai's Photo Soap [MetaCreations] (Win32) - all versions;
read/write; commercial. (This is a photo-retouching tool. The Mac/PPC
version [1.0] has no native PNG support but will attempt to use a Photoshop PNG
plug-in if it finds one; unfortunately, when it does so, it creates
invalid PNG files [verified with Photoshop PNG plug-in 1.0d5]).

Kontour
[Kai-Uwe
Sattler] (Unix/KDE) - all versions? read/write with Qt Image IO Extension Library
installed; freeware (GPL) with source. (Kontour was originally known as
KIllustrator. As of 2005, it "has been discontinued";
its replacement is a new application, Karbon14, above.)

Krayon - see Krita below

Krita
[Krita Team]
(Unix/KDE) - all
versions; read/write; full (non-palette) alpha support; full 16-bps
support as of version 1.5 (coming); requires ImageMagick,
lcms, libpng, and zlib; freeware (GPL) with source.
(This is nominally part of KOffice and was originally known as
KImageShop, then Krayon, and now Krita.
A first preview release [pre-alpha] was announced in September 2004,
followed by the first full release [1.4] in June 2005.)

MS Paint [Microsoft]
(Win32) - versions in Windows XP(?) and later; read/write;
commercial. (This is one of the "accessories" that has been bundled
with Windows since its earliest days. PNG support is a relatively new
feature, however.)

mvComicsMaker
[Michal Vagac]
(Linux/Qt) - all versions? write-only? freeware with source.
(This is a "free graphics editor for creating bitmap and vector
animations under Linux." It can at least render to PNGs; it may also
be able to read them.)

NeoPaint [NeoSoft]
(Win32) - version 4(?) and later; read/write;
single-color transparency in 8-bit palette images (possibly broken in
1-bit and 4-bit); full 32-bit alpha transparency? no 16-bit support;
shareware. (There is also an older DOS version, but it does not support
PNG.)

OmniGraffle [Omni
Development] (Mac OS X Server) - all versions; write-only;
full 32-bit alpha support; commercial/limited freeware. (This is an
object-oriented drawing and charting program. "When you buy an app
from us it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling in your tummy, like if you
ate some sweaters." See also OmniWeb on the browsers page.)

Paint.Net
[Paint.Net
developers] (Win32.NET) - all versions? read/write; full
32-bit alpha support as of version 2.1; freeware (MIT X11) with C#
source.

Paint Shop Pro [Jasc]
(Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 3.01 and later; read/write;
broken gamma and chromaticity support in 7.0 (writes zero values) and
no gamma support in older versions; only simple (binary) transparency
in version 3.x; 32-bit alpha support in version 4.0 and later (save
with grayscale mask); "cheap" transparency (single-color RGB and
grayscale) support in version 7.0 and later; no support for palette
alpha (nor any plans to add support); writes unnecessarily large
palettes and tRNS chunks (reportedly fixed in version 6.0); text support
(Title, Author, Copyright, and
Description keywords); broken tIME support in version 6.0
(writes binary tIME data to "Creation Time" text chunk); uses
MNG as its native "Animation Shop"
format (up to date with current draft spec as of PSP7/AS3); commercial.

Personal Paint [Cloanto] (Amiga) - version 6.3 and later; read/write;
freeware, as of final 7.1b release (formerly commercial). (This was the
first commercial app to ship with PNG support,
in April 1995. Cloanto also made available a free PNG DataType,
listed on the miscellaneous apps page, and
had a commercial PNG toolkit for the Amiga, for which information was
once available via e-mail to info@cloanto.com . As of early 2000, Personal Paint is
available from Cloanto only as part of the Amiga Forever package,
but it may be downloaded separately from Aminet or any of its mirrors.)

Photo-Brush [Mediachance] (Win32) - all versions? read/write;
shareware. (This is an image editor with special emphasis on
photo-retouching. See also CompactDraw, above, and
Real-DRAW, below.)

Photogenics [Paul Nolan / Idruna Software] (Amiga, Linux, Win32,
WinCE) -
version 2.0 and later (or version 1.2 with the Photogenics PNG
loader/saver, listed on the toolkits
page); read/write; full alpha support? full 16-bps support in Photogenics HDR
96-bit variant? commercial. (The PNG loader was "badly broken" in
version 4.0, but the author reports that it was fixed as of version 4.1
or thereabouts [thanks to Oliver Roberts]. Photogenics was originally distributed by
Almathera, which went out of business in early 1997; Paul Nolan, the
original programmer, released version 4.0 on his own in April 1999 and
version 5.0 under the Idruna name in 2001. Versions prior to 5.0 are
available only for the Amiga.)

Photo>Graphics PRO [TrueSpectra] (OS/2, Win32) - version 2.0 and later
(OS/2) and version 1.1 (Win32); read/write; freeware (formerly
commercial). (This product has been discontinued as of
1 January 1999. Until 31 December 1999, both versions
were available from TrueSpectra's support page, but as of
1 January 2000, only the free registration keys are still visible.
The key for the
OS/2 version (6.3 MB) is TSPG20-000K-65WG8, and that for the
Win32 version (10 MB) is TSPW10-000C0-2NY44 .)

Photo-Paint [Corel]
(Win32, Mac PPC) - version 7.0 and later; read/write;
full 32-bit alpha support in version 8.0 and later; ignores transparency
in palette images; no 16-bit support (i.e., down-converts to 8-bit
samples); commercial. (This product
is no longer available separately but but only as part of
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite above. See also the similarly named
Ability Photopaint above.)

PhotoSEAM [Mediachance] (Win32) - all versions; read/write;
shareware. (This is a limited version of Photo-Brush, above.)

Photoshop [Adobe]
(Windows 3.x, Win32, Mac 68k/PPC) - version 4.0 and
later; read/write; full alpha support, but no palette
transparency in versions prior to 5.5; broken gamma and chromaticity
support in versions prior to 5.5 (gamma-writing appears to work in 4.0
only if the ambient-light setting is at `medium'; it is completely
broken in 5.0--i.e., Photoshop records a value that is off by a factor
of two, making images look far too dark; and gamma-reading is reportedly
non-existent); broken iCCP support in 5.5 (writes faulty zlib wrapper on
iCCP chunk, which can crash apps that use libpng 1.0.6's png_get_iCCP()
function [fixed in 6.0]; can't read valid iCCP chunks); no support
for PNG sRGB chunk (5.5 and later: uses iCCP chunk to store 2 KB
sRGB profile instead of sRGB chunk to store single-byte "rendering
intent"); partial 16-bps support as of 7.0 (read-only; broken in 5.5
and 6.x [high- and low-order bytes swapped] and non-existent in older
versions; see Brendan Bolles' SuperPNG plug-in for full 16-bps read/write support);
relatively poor compression in versions prior to 7.0 (slightly better
but still not great in "Save for Web" mode); very slow compression in
version 7.0; doesn't save text annotations; incapable of saving bi-level
PNGs; commercial.
See Chapter 4 of
PNG: The Definitive Guide for
information on making alpha-channel PNGs with Photoshop 4.0 and
5.0; technique should be applicable to later versions, as well.
(Photoshop 3.0 for Windows is still supported via the
PNGForm.8BI plug-in, but
Infinop's
plug-in, which provided equivalent support for PS 3.0 for Mac,
is no longer available. See also Macromedia's xRes below.)

PhotoTiger [Michael
Moegn] (OS/2) - version 2.0(?) and later; read/write;
shareware. (As of 26 December 2002, this product is no longer
available, and the company has ceased operations.)

PhotoXL - see Satori below

Picnic [Peder Blekken]
(BeOS PPC) - all versions; read/write; freeware. (This is a
Photoshop/"GIMP-like paint/image-processing program." PNG is the
only supported output format in version 0.4. Source code will
eventually be made available.)

Picture Effecter [Hiroaki Watanabe]
(Win32) - all versions? read/write; uses libpng
and zlib; freeware. (This is a Japanese special-effects tool,
apparently, with support for colorspace conversions, convolutions, etc.
It seems to be compatible with Susie image-format plug-ins [see
the image viewers page], of which one is
separately available at the link above, and it includes its own PNG
export module. A tutorial/overview is also available.)

Pixelformer [Qualibyte
Software] (Win32) - version 0.8 and later; read/write; full
alpha support, including RGBA-palette and "cheap" (single-shade/color)
transparency in grayscale and RGB images; multipass optimization;
currently freeware (0.8 beta). (This is an icon and bitmap editor with
a number of features more common in high-end image editors.)

Real-DRAW [Mediachance] (Win32) - all versions; read/write;
32-bit alpha transparency (claimed); shareware. (This is a higher-end
paint/draw program than CompactDraw, above. It supports both
vector and bitmapped objects and apparently can import and export both,
too. See also Photo-Brush, above.)

Satori [Spaceward Graphics]
(Win32) - version 2.5 and later; read/write; full alpha
support; full 16-bit support? commercial. (This is a high-end family
of image-editing, compositing and special effects programs.
PhotoXL is the scaled-down consumer version; FilmFX and
FilmFX64 are the high-end professional versions targeted at the
film and video industry.)

Shake [Nothing
Real] (Irix/X, Linux/X, Windows NT/2k) - all versions;
read/write;
full 16-bit support; full alpha support; partial gamma support; color
correction? commercial. (This is a high-end family of compositing and
image-manipulation programs, used primarily for special effects in film.
Version 1.0 consisted only of command-line tools, but 2.0 added a GUI
interface. Shake Render is the medium-cost, command-line-only
image-processing engine [for batch processing]. Shake Lite is
the stripped-down, command-line-only version, but it is still capable of
displaying and converting between a large number of image formats.)

Sketch
[Bernhard
Herzog] (Unix/X) - all versions; read-only; freeware (GPL)
with source. (This is a drawing program implemented in Python and
therefore capable of importing any bitmapped image format supported by
the Python Imaging Library--see the toolkits page for details.)

Sodipodi
[Lauris Kaplinski and
others] (Unix/GTK+, Win32/GTK+) - all versions?
write-only? full alpha support? requires libpng and zlib;
freeware (GPL) with C source. (This is a "vector-based drawing
program" that uses SVG as its native format and that supports
"antialiased display, alpha transparencies, vector fonts," etc. It
was based in part on Gill; see also Inkscape.)

Take-1 [FileStream]
(Win32) - version 2.0 and later; read/write; shareware. (This is
a suite of "web-publishing tools," including an image editor, a
[lossy] image optimizer/compressor, and an HTML editor.)

TuxPaint
[New Breed Software /
Bill Kendrick] (Linux/SDL, Win32/SDL, etc.) - version
2002.08.23 and later; write-only? uses SDL, libpng and
zlib; freeware (GPL) with source. (This is a paint program for
children. It provides simple tools, a collection of clip art, and no
access to the underlying file system. It should be easily portable to
any OS with an SDL port--e.g.,
Mac OS, Mac OS X, etc.)

Viscosity [Jedor]
(Win32) - all versions? read/write; full alpha support?
commercial. (This is a full image editor, but it is primarily targeted
at the creation of animations. PNG is supported as a still format.)

Visio [Visio]
(Windows 3.x, Win32) - version 4.1 and later
(a patch [1.1M]
with the new PNG and JPEG filters is available for users of version 4.0);
read/write; commercial. (This is a suite of applications that includes
Visio Standard, Visio Technical, Visio Professional
and Visio Enterprise.)

Webstyle [Xara]
(Win32) - all versions; read/write; commercial. (This is an
image editor specifically designed to produce web graphics; it appears
to be what was formerly known as Xara Webster prior to version 3.)

Webtricity [Micrografx] (Win32) - version 2.0(?) and later;
read/write; commercial. (PNG support is via two included programs:
Picture Publisher [above] and Windows Draw. See also
iGrafx Designer, above.)

WinImages [Black Belt Systems] (Win32) - version R5 and
later; read/write; MNG support as
of version R6 (write-only; read support expected in a subsequent
maintenance update); commercial. (This is more of a special-effects and
animation studio than a "normal" image editor.)

xart
[Rick Hohensee, David
Koblas, Torsten Martinsen,
Greg Roelofs] (Unix/X) -
all versions; read/write; no alpha support; uses libpng and
zlib; freeware with source. (This is Rick Hohensee's "mutant
spawn" of XPaint (below), with emphasis on freehand drawing.
This release appears to be a later version than that available from
Rick's web page and may be the final version; 341K.)

xfig
[Supoj Sutanthavibul,
Paul King,
Brian V. Smith, and
others]
(Unix/X) - version 3.2.0 and later; read/write as of version
3.2.3d (older versions write-only); no transparency
support; requires pnmtopng and Ghostscript; freeware
(BSDish) with source. (This is a vector-based image editor, often used
with TeX, that can nevertheless import a variety of bitmap formats. It
uses the TransFig package for export, which in turn
uses pnmtopng and/or Ghostscript for PNG support.)

XPaint
[David Koblas, Torsten
Martinsen, Jean-Pierre
Demailly, Greg Roelofs]
(Unix/X, OpenVMS/X) - version 2.3.1-png and later (PNG support
fully integrated as of version 2.4.2); read/write; no alpha support;
uses libpng and zlib; freeware (BSDish) with source.
(Torsten's old web
pages are still available, but the old OpenVMS port [2.4.4] is not.)

xRes [Fauve / Macromedia] (Win32, Mac 68k/PPC) -
version 2.0 and later;
read/write; full alpha support; no gamma support; commercial. (Version
2.0 was bundled with Kai's Power Tools 3.0 SE, and version 3.0
was part of FreeHand 7 above. This product was discontinued
after version 3.0. Reportedly some portion of it became part of
Fireworks above.)